July 29, 2003

He's even better than I thought

I was just reading this Slate article about Dean, and at the end I saw the following information:

But one thing bothers me about Dean, and I raise it with him. He wants to renegotiate NAFTA to include labor and environmental standards—his lone departure from Clinton-style Rubinomics.... (Dean's theory in a nutshell: The structure of wealth in the United States before labor unions resembled that in Third World countries today, so in order to create middle classes in the developing world, we need to bring labor unions to them.)

This is not the sort of thing one says insincerely, to win voters (not that I think he does that very much anyway). He believes it. He really gets that lower consumer prices are not the be-all and end-all of economic policy, that we also need to consider quality of life and not be exploitive, even of workers in foreign countries. And he's even able to articulate some further economic benefits to Being Good:

"Because in return for making the price of goods go up, you've fixed the illegal immigration problem, you've fixed the drain of jobs problem, you've created a middle class that can buy American exports. There's a lot you get for that."

Do you see why this man needs to be our next President?

"Statistics is like a bikini: what it reveals is suggestive, but what it
conceals is vital." --Keith Schwols